Operating Systems

Earlier this week Microsoft finally shipped its Vista "Longhorn" operating system, which has been receiving a fair amount of attention from traditional media sources. However, if Windows is not your thing Fedora 7 Test 1 is now out. Originally Fedora 7 Test 1 was scheduled for release on January 30, but a delay had pushed it back to today. Fortunately this two-day delay should not push back the April final release. Many of the features for Fedora 7 were covered in our Fedora 7: The Linux Knight in Shining Armor article. However, what we have to offer today is the first screenshots of Fedora 7 along with some of our very preliminary thoughts on the Fedora Desktop LiveCD.

Kurumin Linux is a distribution we had never heard of prior to today's encounter. The latest Kurumin release, Light 7.0, is a mini LiveCD that is targeted for Brazilian users and is based on Debian/Knoppix. This mini LiveCD is sized at 182MB while featuring the full KDE desktop along with plenty of extra software.

The Alixe 0.10 RC1 LiveCD is based upon SLAX 6.0 and ships with the Linux 2.6.19.3 kernel, GTK+ updates, and many more updates. It was an interesting time for us to try out Alixe 0.10 RC1 and it brings a fair amount of innovation to the table.

Fedora Core 6 was released on October 24, 2006 and scheduled to come out a half-year later is the seventh major release for the Fedora Project. However, unlike Yarrow, Tettnang, Heidelberg, Stentz, Bordeaux, and Zod, Fedora 7 is shaping up to be the most ambitious release yet. With all the work and reform going into Fedora 7 it poses the question, will Fedora 7 be Linux's knight in shining armor?

The second beta release of SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4 is now out the door. SimplyMEPIS 6.0 Beta 2 appends an array of fixes along with tweaks and other improvements. MEPIS developers are also working on Macintosh Intel hardware. At Phoronix we have provided a few screenshots from this release.

In time for the new year, Knoppix 5.1.0 has been released. Even with Windows users, Knoppix is an incredible GNU/Linux LiveCD that offers a great deal of desktop functionality and features. New in this latest release of Knoppix is the Linux 2.6.19.1 kernel, update to Debian Etch, OpenOffice.org 2.1, and integration of 3D desktop effects with Beryl and Emerald. Both CD and DVD versions of Knoppix 5.1 are available.

Out just in time for Christmas from Red Hat is the official Fedora Core 6 i386 LiveCD. Offering a LiveCD is one of the areas where the Fedora Project has lagged behind the other distributions. For some time Fedora developers had been experimenting with Kadischi but this official LiveCD was built using the Pilgrim project. The tools used to build this LiveCD have been added to Fedora Extras. Some of the features for the Fedora Core 6 Zod LiveCD is GNOME 2.16, Linux 2.6.18 kernel, and a great deal of other desktops. Overall this is a very clean and polished LiveCD with some of the best software and advancements found within Fedora 6.

The GNOME camp has pushed out a new development release in time for the holidays. GNOME 2.17.4 is another test release in the road to GNOME 2.18.0 in March of next year. Many packages were updated from GNOME 2.17.3, so this afternoon we had set out on a GARNOME adventure to capture some new GNOME screenshots to see how GNOME 2.17 is shaping up. Overall it looked quite well except for a few more bugs than normal.

Project Looking Glass has reached version 1.0! For the uninformed, Project Looking Glass is an open-source 3D desktop environment for not only Linux but also Solaris and Windows. This software is all powered by Java after three years in development. Curious to see what Project Looking Glass looks like in action, as well as some of their Java 3D applications? We have an arsenal of images to demonstrate this software as we run it on Fedora Rawhide FC7.